


Two Birds

by hjm52



Series: Skyborn [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Birthday Present, Clans, Coming of Age, For a Friend, Light Angst, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10966275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hjm52/pseuds/hjm52
Summary: One tries to fly away, and the other





	Two Birds

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my best friend's birthday, posted over a month late. Have a great day, Rina! The story is based on a manga she/we are trying to bring to life, and a bit of an experiment. The manga in progress itself can be found on Instagram as @skyborn_manga
> 
> For reference, Natsumi lives in the Sky Nation (people from there are called Skyborn, haha). There are lots of mountains and valleys. Her, clan, The Sun, are situated atop a fairly large mountain. Next to the Sky Nation is their rivals, the Water Nation (feel like the last air bender yet?). Most of their lands are islands, but they also have a piece of the mainland. They are Enemies of the Skyborn, but not currently at war. A person from Water is called a Watermaid/Waterman.
> 
> Happy reading!

Raven disappears when Natsumi is ten.

For the first time she remembers, anyway. Being six years her older brother, it’s hard for Natsumi to be completely sure. 

It’s natural for Skies to run away at least once during their teen years, healthy even; The Skyborn First Taste of Freedom. The actions taken are expected, even tolerated, to a certain extent. Natsumi can remember panic; him disappearing into nothing but short conflicting misleading observations of him from servants; hours upon hours wondering if the Water had kidnapped him.

He comes back at midnight. Of course he does, dramatic creature that he is. She waits freezing and absolutely exhausted at the gates of the Sun -it’s raining- and she blames him for it because she knows he’d do it for her, so sitting in the wet and cold is now obligatory. He’s ecstatic and joyful, and she’s so angry. 

He deflates at the first set of scathing, scarring words and when she looks back, she’ll notice. She doesn’t though, and so she keeps at it. They’re both spitting tears and red in the face when they part ways. 

The next time Raven flies off, he takes her with him. And the next time, and the one after that, and so forth. Natsumi wonders sometimes if it’s simply to shut her up. Then she wonders if she should care; she got her way, after all. 

They soar through clouds and leave the world behind them, spy other nations from the air, draw maps of the countryside. Some days, they find a grassy hill, and just stare into the abyss. Raven teaches her how to braid her hair to her scalp so it doesn’t get in her face when flying and in the wind. She catches him up on clan gossip and tell him stories of her daily life. They’re Natsumi’s best memories of her brother, and probably his best of her. As always, their fun ends with the stroke of midnight.

 

Then of course, life catches up. 

Before she can blink, the Sun induces her as an adult, as the tradition insists, then throws her into Warrior Training. Sky Nation may not be a warmongering nation, but they are not Forest Nation tree-huggers. Every citizen must do at least two years of military service. 

To her dismay, her teachers decide almost the moment they see her that Natsumi is made for the front lines, unlike Raven’s aptitude for the subtle art of espionage. Instead of spying, Natsumi studies blades, archery, hand-to-hand and flight combat. 

She excels, enjoys it even. At eighteen, she’s Natsumi of the Sun, lieutenant of the twenty-third outpost. At twenty, she’s captain.

 

Meanwhile, Raven is always either gone or going. His missives pile up exponentially. 

At first, the siblings try to stay together. Natsumi sneaks into his office with his favourite foods, steals him away to the freedom of the air, makes it work. 

Then she gets busy, and doesn't have the time to force her way into her brother’s life anymore. So they grow apart. Disappear into thin air. It's almost surprising how easy it is to let go. She’s disappointed, but it will pass.

 

After a while, she concludes that they’re simply different people. 

Raven’s missions are dangerous, sure, but he doesn’t openly risk his neck the way she does. He doesn’t have sleepless nights the way she does. 

She resents him for it— she’s living proof that he could have amounted to so much more than what he became, what he is. She’s being useful; she’s on her second promotion in five years; she fights alongside the Dove of the Battlefield, the most celebrated female Skyborn Warrior in history; she’s not giving up or disappearing into the middle of nowhere for months on end; the Sun clan elders are even considering her as a wife to the heir’s younger brother.

Raven, the brother she once looked up to, is none of those things. He isn’t even fighting anymore, having done his years of service and moved on. He’s almost always away, and is past the point that Natsumi can understand. 

It's one thing for a Skyborn to reach for the taste of freedom as a young adult, and another to never let go of it.

 

When the Sun cremates her—their—parents, victims of a Water attack, Raven has not been seen in a full year. He comes back a month later, and finds himself crashing on Natsumi’s apartment floor. He leaves, as per usual, almost immediately after. Natsumi doubts he even feels the loss of their parents (and their home, and their friendship).

 

Shortly after Natsumi turns twenty-three, Raven is officially declared MIA. This time, something in her chest tells her he’s never coming back. She cries, but she gets up, keeps moving, and begins his last rites. She refuses to linger in grief for a brother who left when she was ten, and never truly came back. So she obsessively purges him of her apartment, burns incense sticks twice daily, prays to the Angels and bundles up his remaining possessions, and carves his name into the family stone. She burns his bundled things at sunset, in the place of a body they could never reclaim, and scatters the ashes in the wind, over a cliff. 

The clan does not approve of Natsumi’s initiative, the abrupt way she conducted the rites for her last of kin. There even is talk of removing her from the clan. But Natsumi needs the Sun, work for the sun, gave her whole world to the sun. The elders offer her one last chance. She agrees to marry Sutarai, the younger brother of the newly made clan head, and a man she will never love, without batting an eyelash.

 

She works harder than she’s ever worked to gain back favour from the elders. Her wedding is stuffy and as true as her love of Sutarai (or lack thereof). Her first pregnancy is a shit-show, from the discovery to the first time she holds tiny Dragon in her arms.

As a new mother, she’s bone tired in a way she didn’t think was possible. She has little-to-no help for the first ten months; Sutarai is constantly working, doing her duties as well as his, and she can’t contact his parents since Sutarai’s brother’s kids occupy their time already. 

She keeps going, keeps raising her child, never gives up or considers any other option. She’s a proud mother and almost directly responsible for every breath he takes. That, however, doesn't stop her from finding a suitable daycare for Dragon the moment he’s old enough and launching herself back into her job.

 

Soran is a whoops!baby, but an easier one. Natsumi’s thirty now and at the end of her fighting career. She takes two full years off for Soran and Dragon and never regrets it. 

When she does come back, she gives up her captain’s badge to her second-in-command, and takes only the quickest and easiest missions. Now, she has people to come home to.

 

At three, Dragon is the spitting image of Raven. She vows that she’ll make him come home at the end of the day, but that’s all she vows; even at three, she knows he won’t stay forever.

 

Natsumi’s last mission directly follows an escort mission, six months after her thirty-fourth birthday. She hasn’t even got the time to say hello before she departs.

An alarm comes from the border her outpost controls, where a scout reports a Skyborn and a Watermaid attacking one of Natsumi’s bases. Killing Natsumi’s men. 

 

She is furious and vengeful as she strikes them down. The Watermaid dies instantly and painlessly but the man has time to scream. She relishes in it, revenge was a dish she ways To turn and stare at her with Dragon’s aged face. 

Raven.

He collapses. Dies.

 

Natsumi howls.

She doesn't know how long he’s lived here, with this pretty Watermaid, in this house next to the ocean. Judging by the photos on the walls, the comfortable atmosphere of their house—home—long enough. 

Her brother was married, domestic and in love. Her brother, who left her, made her bury him, saw every time she looked in her kid’s eyes, was happy to give the ultimate promise to a Watermaid.

She keeps searching, more frantic. For what, she doesn't know. Her mind is screaming shrill and loud incomprehensible. 

She fixes on an image on the wall tries to slow the spinning room. The screaming continues, louder than ever. The photographs come into focus. A couple in a tree. a sunset by a lake. An pink-cheeked infant. 

Her realisation and horror comes with the next urgent shriek—

A baby’s wail.

Oh no.


End file.
